FSX-MS Regretful purchases for FSX

[Simmer2050 28]

Remember, no responses to what each person regrets purchasing. Just state YOUR case and move on.

 

That reminds me of a guy dancing to the sound of the music as opposed to the rythm. Kinda of like R2D2 at a disco.

 

It helps to allow some natural flow of conversation, but wihtout going off topic.

[molleh 451]

Hmm, thankfully I'm happy with almost everything I've bought for FSX, there are a few I regret buying though:

 

1) Air Hauler - It's a great program, I just realized after buying it that I was more interested in the random flight generation and rating system than I was running a business.

 

2) Carenado Piper Archer II - Low res cockpit textures and a shoddy flight model "hangared" it permanently for me.

 

3) FSGenesis mesh - Too many airport "plateau" issues.

[lateagain 45]

If fan bois is considered unacceptable in the forum now? :rolleyes: can it please be replaced with "less than critical user" :huh: rather than the somewhat silly "over excited user"? :wacko:

 

I for one never get overexcited, stunned or awstruck with this hobby. It keeps me entertained as a hobby and the previous posts show that some posts by "less than critical users" ^_^ have mislead many of a more sober, sensible and moderate disposition?

 

If the bot that does this can't be reconfigured maybe there should be a bot edit glossary? :lol:

 

Geoff

[MindYerBeak 73]

If fan bois is considered unacceptable in the forum now? can it please be replaced with "less than critical user" rather than the somewhat silly "over excited user"?

 

I think that "serial praiser" or "brown noser" would be better words.At least you get the picture

[MindYerBeak 73]

Actually, I think this is a very important topic. With all of the developer hype and lies being told by the a really excited user, I have wasted plenty of money on substandard or misrepresented products. God save us from the a really excited user!

The truth of the matter is that I am really ###### that many a really excited user have the attitude that we will not say anything bad about defective and substandard products. The end result is that developers get away with releasing substandard and unfinished products. The failure to call them out on this leads many unsuspecting consumers to waste money on them. We are not doing anyone any favors by letting this state of affairs to continue.

 

Guys, the least we can do is be honest with our fellow simmers!

 

I think the above should be stickied and forum members encouraged to speak out instead of being silenced.

[simmerhead 885]

Just Flight DC-3 and Viscount. I had too high expectations.

 

Earth Simulation's Isles of Scilly. Such a great scenery ruined by the ES Installer software. Bought it, installed it once, but have deleted it now.

 

FS Genesis and FS Global Mesh. I just hate airports and lakes that suddenly are on top of plateaus. Use freeware mesh for a few mountainous areas instead. I could have lived with the mesh if they could be installed as scenery layers instead. That way they would have been easy to disable for regions they destroy.

 

Aerosoft Madeira X. Nice airport, but the reast of the scenery looks terrible.

 

FSAddon Super Cub. Freeware quality. Have to live with the A2A Cub instead.

 

 

Not bad products at all, but they just doesn't tickle me the right way. Sadly there are very few really good addons out there, and luckily I am hard to fool. I can usually tell from the devs website that they suck.

[PIC007 82]

I don't really have any to list because I always wait until at least a few weeks after a release to see what actual users have to say about a product. I then 'filter' the replies, disregard the 'a really excited user' and the 'naysayers', and take an average. If the product still interests me, I usually wait a while longer to see what else developes from the replies, then make a decision to buy or not.

 

If a product has a 'locked' forum, as a rule I simply move on, no mula for them, unless they offer a refund policy like Flight 1. I know the logic used is that it's a form of 'pirate protection' but from my standpoint, it reeks of "we don't want people to know our problems until after we get their money", especially if there is no refund option.

 

In spite of all the 'due diligence' sometimes I do get caught though. I have one plane I wanted for a long time, waited to see the feedback, finally bought it, and immediatly discovered that the text was so small and used a color that was impossible to read on the PFD and GPS for me that I only flew it once and it's now collecting dust in the corner of the hanger.

 

Bottom line is, do your research, don't be the first in line, and hopefully garbage products will dissapear and quality ones will flourish.

 

EDIT: Avsim, are you seriouly censoring F_A_N_B_O_Y ???

[MrSpeaker 122]

A program called Voice Buddy

 

Leonardo Maddog (Good plane for fs9 maybe but the fsx version must be just a port over, very hard on fps, trying to set this thing up is not fun, running sid and star cleanup thingy, Never did work for me, all in all a very confusing product to get set up)

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Guess I have been either pretty lucky or I have done my homework before I purchase as I can only think of two products that were a tad disappointing. Not bad for ten years of purchases.

 

The first one was my very first add-on purchase for FS9, some program that went through checklists and copilot stuff - can't even remember the name. Just remember for being a program to help alleviate intricate aircraft systems/setups, this program took longer to set up than actual fly! So I learned my lesson about reading opinions and reviews right off.

 

Only other one was that FS-Cargo (remember that?), one of the first earn $$ as you fly type programs. I remember lot's of hype about it was going to expand with a lot more add-ins but never did. So I guess it just did not expand like I thought it would.

 

Other than that really no complaints - sure some not quite up to what I hoped for or thought they would be like but nothing worth complaining about dropping a few bucks for. One thing I will never do is buy on spec. That is, if a developer promotes a product with "future" fixes, updates, public beta or other "vaporware" tactics, I just won't bite. I'll buy something based on what is available at the moment of purchase. I have seen too many good intentions here to never materialize.

 

Clutch

[Paul K 1,348]

I'm afraid I just don't get the "don't be negative" mantra. Before Ralph Nader started the crusade for consumer rights all manner of sub standard rubbish in every aspect of consumerism was being unloaded on an unsuspecting public. Now there's hardly a country on the planet that doesn't have some sort of consumer protection and the internet has given consumers the ability to post reviews of any purchase. FS add-ons are just another purchase. If it's good there'll be no "negativity" anyway?

 

 

Well said, Geoff. The 'don't be negative' mantra...couldn't have put it better. :smile2:

[Poncho 19]

First off, GREAT THREAD that is long overdue. I'm sure to surprise many with the second of my 2 regrets.

 

1- Captain Sim 727- Thanks to this fiasco I learned early on to research my purchases first. This plane was loaded with so many bugs, and any support was a complete nightmare and waste of time. Some of the fixes were solved by customers spending hours and hours of their own time to solve the problems. I like to FLY, not FIX a broken product that should never been sold to others or myself.

 

2- Orbx/FTX New Zealand South Island- Having bought many of their regions before this one, I put my trust in them that they would not put out a broken prouduct. That trust was broken with this purchase and I have come to realize that they too have fallen victim to mentality of "rush it out the door, fix later when time permits so we can get more regions done and out there on the market while we are in demand".

 

My main issue is the broken wind socks that point in different directions no matter what the wind is doing. Basically you can't fly over an airport and use the wind socks to determine which runway you are going to land on. Yes I can "cheat" for the untowered airports (of which there is many) to find out what the wind is doing, but this is to be a simulation, not an arcade game. Anyway this product has been out for almost a year now and still no fix. Some may consider this no big deal, but I do. I have not flown NZSI since it came out, so ya I certainly regret buying it. BTW I probably don't need to point out that in this time 2 other regions have since been released, and several airports. I know there is different groups working on different products, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

 

I am always amazed at how a product gets released with what I consider to be such a obvious flaw? How did this get past the testing stages? Did nobody use wind or real world weather? It must have just been ignored.

 

Anyway the problem we face as Flight Sim consumers is that many products we purchase can't be returned if we are not satisfied with the product. I feel my only recourse is to simply no longer support these companies by purchasing more of their products and giving them more of my money. Since I bought the 727 about 5 years ago I have never purchased another Captain Sim product, nor will I ever. Also I have not bought another Orbx/FTX product since NZSI almost a year ago.

[Lowflyer 97]

Flight1 ATR 72: Not bad at all for it's time but the conversion from FS9 to FSX wasn't made properly and I quickly gave up after frequently not being able to complete flights due to random crashes, usually FMC-related.

 

PMDG 737NGX: Great add-on in every way but one that I've hardly used. Bought it because I wanted to see what the fuzz was all about despite not actually giving a toss about jet airliners except for the 747 and, of course, the Concorde. PMDG did a great job but sadly it was a waste of money for me.

 

Wilco Avanti II: The only add-on that I've bought that I would describe as bloody awful. Seems like the devs spent most of their days modelling a car (!) and a blinking woman in the cabin who despite their best efforts still has her butt stuck firmly in the uncanny valley. This is also the only add-on that, for reasons unfathomable to me, caused a bigger fps drop on my PC (i7, 4 GHz) than the NGX.

[turnandbank 243]

Captain Sim 757 - Virtual Cockpit sold me, but too many glitches and eractic flight model so went back to flying the trustworthy LDS767.

Captain Sim 727 - OK, but hard on FPS and just don't fly it.

LHC Bellanca Viking - Poor flight model.

Iris Diamond Katana Twinstar - Poor flight model.

Caranado PA32 Saratoga - Flight model / eyepoints.

FEX - Great textures, but promised weather engine never delivered.

FTX Tamworth: I like all the FTX sceneries, but, for some reason this one was unusually hard on performance.

Scenery Tech Landclass - Very inaccurate in areas I knew - Switched to Cloud 9 Landclass which was much better and now Orbx Scenery where available which is better yet.

 

 

[ajpongress 467]

 

I think the above should be stickied and forum members encouraged to speak out instead of being silenced.

 

In that case let me add another to the list, except ill call it the regrettable "trial" product.

 

FSTramp, the fsx successor to FSNavigator came out just recently. But I wouldn't call it a successor since it actually has LESS features then FSNavigator did.

 

They have a trial, which I tried. But i discovered that you can't run the program in fsx full screen and you can't run the FXAA shader injector with FSTramp.

I didn't know that at first and emailed the developer for support. After verifying I was trying the trial and hadnt actually spent money yet, he told me that unstable over clocked hardware was to blame for fsx crashing every time I opened the FSTramp map.

 

I emailed back I had zero over clocked anything. He never replied and I sent three more polite emails asking for help to troubleshoot his trial. He didn't reply to any of them.

Later I found through process of elimination that it was the FXAA injector I use.

 

I wish the sim community could start a "developer black list" because this guy definitely belongs in it. He had single answer support that wasn't right and didn't want to even attempt helping out a potential buyer.

FSTramp is a skeleton version of FSNavigator that was created for fsx not for the consumer's enjoyment but to stuff this guy's pockets with undeserved money.

 

I'm very glad I never bought it and would have been forced to put up with his abysmal support, or lack of I should say.

Sorry for the rant but this one experience left the most sour taste in my mouth.

 

 

[KingGhidorah 209]

I don't feel really bad saying something less than stellar about my experience with Captain Sim, if for no other reason, I wouldn't be the first to do so. I promised myself I would limit my appearance on this thread, but the temptation is simply too much! I bought their 727 a few years ago because I really wanted one and people were absoluting RAVING about how great it was. I was less than pleased with jaw dropping amazement how so many people could give so much positive praise for such an unfinished work. I don't remember what I paid for it, and the 722 expansion, only that it was one of the most expensive packages that I had bought up to that time, and of course, I couldn't return it. I was patient and actually left it installed through 3 or 4 service packs, not one of which addressed any of my complaints about it. I've never gone back to them, and one of my failings is that whenever I see somebody praise this airplane, I immediately, and no doubt unfairly, make a snap judgement about their tastes <_<